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MULTOS celebrates 500 million issued devices

Posted on 27 November, 2013 in Category

Paris - 19th November 2013 – Partners of the MULTOS ecosystem are today celebrating the milestone of reaching over 500 million cards used in the field, cementing the reputation of MULTOS as a highly secure, globally established multi-application smart operating system, reports MAOSCO Ltd., the Secretariat of The MULTOS Consortium.

MULTOS products are extensively deployed in markets requiring uncompromising security and flexibility; hallmarks of the MULTOS platform. This makes it ideal for securing payments (such as those used in EMV for card and mobile payment solutions) and securing identity (National e-ID, e-health, etc). The efficiency of the platform provides run times capable of supporting Transit and other speed dependant contactless solutions. Driven by an open Consortium developing and managing the single, comprehensive Specification, MULTOS is perfectly engineered to adapt the unique provisioning mechanism to meet the demands of new and exciting markets, including mobile, post and instant issuance.

“We are proud to reach this historic milestone and would like to thank all our consortium members, partners and issuers for their strong support in making it a reality. This figure represents the commitment of those in the entire MULTOS scheme, and is a powerful endorsement to the technology itself. With new markets and verticals being explored and new partnerships being made, we at MAOSCO see a bright future for MULTOS and the consortium.” adds Stuart Attwood, Commercial Director, MAOSCO.

Members of the MULTOS Consortium say;

Dave Meadon, Group Head Chip and Contactless Solutions at MasterCard, and MULTOS Consortium Council Chairman comments “These impressive figures show that MULTOS has played a significant role in the progression of the smart card market over many years. The technology has stood the test of time and MULTOS remains a popular platform, especially for the payments industry.”

“This significant accomplishment by MULTOS is a testament to their strong position in the marketplace,” says Ray Wizbowski, vice president, financial vertical, for Datacard Group. “We have worked with MULTOS for many years and recognize the value they bring to government and financial markets in developing open specifications. This milestone demonstrates their ongoing dedication to being a first-class provider of secure software technology to the global smart card industry.”

Thomas Rosteck, vice president of the Chip Card & Security division of Infineon Technologies says “MULTOS provides a set of unique, highly secure on-chip features. These features enable the smart card industry to easily implement robust and interoperable card solutions. Over the past ten years, Infineon has supplied the vast majority of MULTOS chips for payment, authentication and government applications. Our new SOLID FLASHTM products perfectly contribute to the MULTOS product range by offering a high degree of flexibility and state of the art security which will further foster the market success of MULTOS projects.”

Richard Cusson, Managing Director of Multos International says “This is a major achievement for the technology and we are proud to have been involved since the inception of MULTOS. It has been an interesting journey bringing our evolving range of MULTOS products to the market over the years, expanding to cover all the major payment schemes and our involvement in the first contactless EMV projects. As the business has grown from those early years and accelerated lately, our main satisfaction comes from fulfilling our customers’ needs. We look forward to being a part of the next 500 million pieces.”

Ian Hermon, Payments Security Manager at Thales e-Security says “Congratulations to the team driving the MULTOS technology for achieving this major milestone. As one of the original Consortium members, Thales is pleased to offer extensive support for MULTOS applications in its card issuance security portfolio, leveraging secure, certified and flexible Thales hardware security module (HSM) technology. The Thales Personalisation Preparation Process (P3) has a proven track record of early support for the latest MULTOS payment applications and Thales looks forward to working closely with the team at MULTOS International as the technology evolves to support a range of mobile payment solutions.”

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About MULTOS
MULTOS is the most robust, industry-backed high security smart card platform, delivering simplicity and innovation to the world’s leading card and e-passport issuers. With more than 500 million issued smart cards across 45 countries, hundreds of issuers, including national governments, banks, corporate enterprises and transit authorities have taken advantage of the high security, multi application platform for their deployment programmes. A wide range of applications including, Chip & PIN payment, contactless payment, authentication, digital identity, biometrics, loyalty and mass-transit ticketing may implemented, and co-reside, using a MULTOS powered chip.